I understand that puts me in the minority around here. But hear me out.

Connecting the Dots

I think that, as a standalone superhero film, this movie fails. To a viewer unfamiliar with the Iron Man movies, Thor, or the upcoming Avengers movie, this really is an incomplete work. That's not, however, the audience for whom this is targeted.

Think about it. Can you picture anyone going into X-Men: First Class or X-Men Origins: Wolverine without having seen (or at least having passing familiarity with) any of the other X-Men movies? If that person exists, I'm willing to bet they were disappointed, confused, or both by their cinematic experience.

CA had a lot of inter-movie work to do. This summer, we're expected to see the Cap'n, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, and Kid Icarus all hang out in the same room. That works on the comic page, but given the films that have already gone to print in this franchise, that's a tall order. Tony Stark's world is essentially magic- and fantasy-free. Thor is a god, for God's sake. That's a helluva bridge to have to build.

To geek out even further for a moment, I think we got that bridge in Captain America. If we're basing Thor's storyline in science fiction rather than fantasy, we have dimension-hopping aliens rather than gods. A stretch, to be sure, but it's much easier to mesh with the tech-based Tony movies. One could argue that the power generated by the Arc Reactor and whatever-you-call-the-triangle-thing-from-Iron-Man-2 has the same origin or operates on the same principle as the artifact found in CA and used by Agent Smith. It's the Theory of Everything for the Avengers, if you will. If you wanna go crazy enough, it might allow for the otherwise physically impossible or improbable powers or transformations of the mutants in the X-Men universe (assuming they share space with the Avengers), Spidey, and even the jolly green giant himself, Mr. Hulk.

But anyway, the tl;dr version of that is simply: Iron Man was point A, Thor was point B, and Captain America was their connecting line. When that kind of weaving is on a film's to-do list, it's going to have a hard time doing anything else.

Anything Else

As a period piece involving technology, I loved this movie. I really liked The Rocketeer and October Sky for the same reason, and--how about that?--Captain America is directed by the same fella. Making him a metahero was a nice touch and kind of new territory for a superhero origin movie. I can't think of another film that shows kids reading the first edition comic of the hero it's building. The moment he went from celebrated showman to USO-show clown was executed flawlessly. It was akin to Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man in his first home-made suit going into the cage match with BOOONNNEEESAAAWWWW...and then getting his ass handed to him.

When I first saw Tommy Lee Jones, I got the same wistful feeling from Crystal Skull's first shot of Harrison Ford. I felt bad for the guy. Good God, you're old! It's OK to retire. You've always been a very cool dude. Just... stop. But I'm glad to say that he changed my mind. Despite his weather-worn face, he's as sharp as ever in this flick and has some of the best lines. Young Howard Stark channeling Leonardo DiCaprio channeling Howard Hughes was fun to watch, too.

I thought Red Skull wasn't much of an antagonist in that he had no real back-story. In fact, the whole SS-meddling-with-the-occult-thing seemed right out of Hellboy, right down to the faceless Hydra footsoldiers.

The inconsistency between which fights were shown in detail and which were relegated to montages was strange, to say the least.

The post-crash ending seemed rushed, not jarring as it was probably intended, but rushed. Some more explanation from Fury would have been nice, but I imagine they'll spend a lot of time in The Avengers filling those blanks.

Aside from that, this was a good intro for Cap. It's about time we had a superhero who knows what to do with a damn gun.

I'm actually in the process of watching Captian America and I'm enjoying it, good flick so far. I also saw the avengers this afternoon it too was fantastic, also shatterd the opening weekend record hitting the 200 million dollar mark destroying Harry Potters previous record.

I could gush for paragraphs on just how solidly The Avengers delivered. Joss Wheadon is my wish-I-was-a-real-writer hero. To mesh a decent narrative into a movie that demanded that much face time for so many established characters is no small task. And he even got to do some fanservice of his own: the smaller transport craft looked an awful lot like Serenity, the use of the helicarrier as an enclosed war room to facilitate roundtable debate seemed right out of a decent Firefly episode, and ScarJo hiding from Hulk seemed a lot like a Reaver attack. Just awesome. I want more. And I want Wheadon surgically grafted to any future scripts.

As for TDKR, I'll bet it has a great opening weekend, but it may not have the legs that Avengers will. The Joker is iconic. Bane, not so much. And Anne Hathaway... maybe it's just me, but I don't buy her as Catwoman. Cheshire Cat-woman, maybe.

Either way, it shouldn't be a pissing match. The fact that comic adaptations are being taken this seriously and given such service and detail is a good thing.